Between Monolingual Policy and Multilingual Reality in South China: English Learners' and Teachers' Perceptions and Experience of Language Awareness, Translation and Translanguaging

Abstract

There are 299 living languages in China (Ethnologue, 2017) and approximately 2000 different mutually unintelligible languages and dialects spoken in China at county and municipal levels(Gao, 2012; Li, 2006; Tsao, 1999). At policy level, Mandarin Chinese has been promoted as the only nation-wide official language since 1956 (Hu, 2002; Li, 2006). In addition, at institutional level, Mandarin Chinese is also the only language which is officially used as medium of instruction in both public and private schools in Han ethnic area (Ministry of Education, 2017). When it comes to languages used in English language classes, the Chinese Ministry of Education encourages English teachers to use English as much as possible at senior secondary school level to develop Chinese learner’s communicative skills (Ministry of Education, 2017). Apparently, there is a discrepancy between monolingual policy and multilingual reality in China. However, very little research has attempted to investigate multilingual situation in school contexts in China, nor teachers’ and learners’ perceptions of the monolingual language policy in school settings. A better understanding of the multilingual situation in school contexts could provide an insightful implication to language policy makers on national language planning as well as institutional language planning. Thus, this study aims to explore the discrepancy that might exist between largely monolingual policy and multilingual reality in a local public school in south China. Second, this study also aims to explore the English teachers’ and English learners’ perceptions and practices regarding language awareness, translation and translanguaging. This could develop a step towards context-sensitive bi-/multilingual pedagogy in similar contexts. This study adopts a sequential mixed-method research design. 306 learners and 15 teachers participated in the quantitative phase and 9 learners, and 10 teachers joined the second qualitative phase. The findings show that between them the 306 learners can use 41 different languages and language varieties. The qualitative data reveals that both teachers and learners overwhelmingly agree that translation and translanguaging are perceived as efficient tools for English teaching and learning. However, my findings clearly demonstrate that they also believe translation and translanguaging are barriers to achieving standard English, which is widely accepted as a goal. Finally, many learners reported that they adopt translanguaging techniques to support their English writing. However, teachers have a mixed opinion towards using translanguaging in English writing. The findings from this study, combined with existing literature leads to implications for research, and potentially for practice and policy.